The independent test labs give avast! Internet Security 2014 high marks. Power users will especially like its sandbox virtualization and SafeZone hardened desktop. Just watch out for its over-aggressive behavior blocker, which quarantined valid programs during testing.

By Neil J. RubenkingAdvanced Firewall The firewall component in this suite correctly stealthed all ports and fended off all port scans and other Web-based attacks. An outside attacker simply wouldn't see this PC from the Internet.

When I attacked the test system with exploits generated by the Core IMPACT penetration tool, avast! fended off most of them. It identified 28 percent of the exploits by name, and the real-time protection component caught another 48 percent when they tried to drop a malicious payload. That's better than most, but note that Norton Internet Security (2014) caught every single one.

Avast! handles program control in much the way Norton does. It automatically configures network and Internet permissions for known good programs, destroys known bad programs, and keeps watch on unknowns, making its own decisions about access. By default it will pop up a notification when it chooses to block an unknown; you can suppress that behavior, or tell it to also notify you when it allows an unknown program to access the network. I definitely prefer this style of program control to products that bombard the user with confirmation queries.

The firewall is tough, too. Any attempt to change its Registry settings or kill its processes ended in "Access denied." A malicious program attempting to stop avast!'s essential services will fail, because the firewall won't allow that without user confirmation. Last year I managed to change the startup status of those services to Disabled; this time around that, too, ended in "Access denied." That's progress!

Safe Play in the Sandbox Probably the smartest thing you can do with a program of dubious provenance is delete it permanently. If for some reason you need to run such a program, you can keep it from doing permanent damage by running it in the Sandbox. To identify sandboxed applications, avast! adds a tag outside the window border saying "avast! Sandbox." If you prefer, you can set it to use a colored border for those windows.

A sandboxed application seems to have full system access, but actually all of the changes it makes are virtualized. When you dig into the settings dialog and delete the sandbox's contents, those changes vanish. Expert users can choose to run sandboxed applications with the privileges of a Limited/Standard account, limit the memory and CPU resources available to sandboxed applications, and prevent screen capture of those applications.

Remember that deleting sandbox contents wipes out changes made by every sandboxed program. Once you've identified a program as benign, your best bet is to clear the sandbox and run it in normal mode.

Browsing in the Safe Zone Running a program in the sandbox prevents it from reaching out and doing damage. Switching to the SafeZone desktop is almost the opposite; it keeps other processes from reaching in to your protected session.

A hardened, Chrome-based browser launches when you switch to SafeZone. By default, avast! automatically offers to make the switch when you visit a known banking or shopping site. You also set it to use SafeZone for any arbitrary site, and you can run other trusted applications inside the SafeZone. If you try to run an app that's not digitally signed or that's otherwise suspicious, you'll be advised to refrain.

The appearance of the SafeZone desktop has changed radically since the previous edition. Its background used to look like dark, industrial metal; now it's a stylized orange mountain range. Focus groups showed that the concept of switching desktops confused some users, so now you switch simply by minimizing SafeZone. You can also opt to switch using a hotkey combination.

When you switch away from SafeZone and then switch back, all of you running protected apps come back with it. If you close SafeZone, the apps get closed. And at any time you can dig into the settings and wipe SafeZone back to its default configuration, eliminating all changes.

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